Standing Pat

Good morning from Cyberland. Just finished reading three morning papers. You know by now how important I feel that is to the preservation of society as we know it.

It has occured to me over the last three months that many UConn women's basketball fans have a keen fascination with the woman who coaches the University of Tennessee's national champions, the Hall of Famer, Pat Summitt.

Can't say that I blame you. Her decision in June - and let's face it, it was HER decision - ended one of the most storied rivalries in the short, and sadly, comparatively non-descript history of Division I women's basketball - her Lady Vols against your UConn Huskies.

That took a lot of vision, don't you think?

Instead of taking a deep breath and letting the angry moment pass, Coach Summitt turned the lights out on the only annual regular-season game that has shown the capacity to cross the rickety bridge between women's basketball fanatics and general sports fans in this nation.

You don't see David Beckham on CBS, do you?

That's power, ladies and gentlemen. That's the definition of formidable, influential, in control. But we also know by now that it was pretty darn selfish. You know, how dare she?

This game mattered. If you don't think that's the case, why would CBS bother to televise the game for years as a warm-up act for NFL playoff games. Why would ESPN think so highly of it to put one of its programming executives on a plane to Knoxville when word got out that Summitt ws about to turn off the light. The game was big business for everyone involved. It made people BIG MONEY. It brought recruits to both campuses. It excited All-American players. It drew attention to women's basketball, perhaps even helped speed the evolution of the WNBA. It wrote history.

Since the decision, we've all wanted to know why? Isn't that what happens in the aftermath of a messy divorce? What went wrong? Why did the love suddenly fade?

Both Summitt and Geno Auriemma know exactly what went wrong and both are waiting for the other one to admit it. Don't hold your breath.

Last week, I walked up to Summitt at the USA women's basketball practice at John Jay College in New York City with two other reporters. Get this, the freaking 2008 Olympic basketball team is practicing in New York City and only THREE media members are there? But that's another story.

We all identify ourselves and when I say Hartford Courant I can see Coach Summitt's eyes narrow. She knows what's coming. After a few questions about USA Basketball and Candace Parker, I ask her if she agreed with the premise that ending the game would hurt the visibility of women's basketball in the country. She said she didn't think so. I asked her if she thought the two teams would play anytime soon again in the regular season. She said she didn't think so.

What she didn't say was why she pulled the plug. So we'll tell you.

She doesn't like Geno or much of anything he represents. She doesn't like his style, his swagger, his methodology. She doesn't like dealing with his jokes. She doesn't enjoy the hype that surrounded the games. She is tired of losing recruits like Maya Moore and Elena Delle Donne to him. She is aware of how tightly-knit the UConn player alumni is and is suspicious of how the tether helps the program recruit. Mostly, she is tired of the program she built into a national powerhouse long before Rebecca Lobo showed up being connected, associated and compared to UConn.

She feels Tennessee is strong enough to thrive without an annual Super Bowl or two with UConn. She is justified to feel that way. And so she ended the series.

Don't expect Geno Auriemma to say anything soon to clarify the issue. He declined my latest invitation to address Summitt's comments last week. He does not want to be protrayed as the antagonist here. He does not want to give any of his critics or Coach Summitt's supporters reason to further vilify him.